Local News

Threatened litigation by the ACLU over Bible distribution in schools and a change to post-game prayer at high school football games sparked one of the most passionate and controversial debates to hit Anderson County in recent memory, and deserves first place for 2013.
The conversation over religious speech really began at the end of August, when all superintendents in the state received letters from the American Civil Liberties Union of KY over the common practice of allowing Gideons International to pass out Bibles during school hours.

The Lawrenceburg man charged with carrying two firearms on Anderson County Middle School property last September was indicted in December by the Anderson County Grand Jury, according to documents on file in the county courthouse.
William Whetzel, 20, of 1042 Dan Drive was indicted on two counts of unlawful possession of a weapon on school property, receiving stolen firearms and carrying a concealed deadly weapon.
Whetzel was seen by school personnel outside of the building carrying a shotgun and had a handgun up his sleeve. He was also reportedly carrying a gas can.

City firefighters were able to save a couple’s Gatewood Drive home when a fire broke out in their bedroom Christmas Day.
Lawrenceburg Fire and Rescue Chief Robert Hume said firefighters were called to 125 North Gatewood around 6:30 p.m. when the home’s occupants, Billy Neal and Kathy Akins, reported that the ceiling in their bedroom was on fire.
Hume said the fire had spread into the home’s attic, forcing firefighters to remove some of the ceiling in two rooms and remove smoldering insulation.

An Anderson County High School senior remained in the intensive care unit at the University of Kentucky Medical Center on Monday following an ATV wreck early Sunday morning.
Megan Schell, a daughter of Tim and Janet Schell, had both lungs punctured by broken ribs and other injuries when the ATV on which she was a passenger flipped several times, throwing her an estimated 50 feet, according to her sister, Sarah Lynn Schell.

When Marine Cpl. Timothy Lewis volunteered to defend his country, he made it clear that if he died doing while doing so, his young daughter was to receive the financial benefits paid to survivors of those who make the ultimate sacrifice.
That apparently didn’t happen, though, and the child’s mother is now facing 33 felony counts for theft by failure to make required disposition.

Boy, could her mare soar.
Rhetta Mountjoy, 98, remembers racing her horse — fresh from the racetrack according to her recollections — down to her family home on Wildcat Road about five miles from town.
“And then I had a mare that I drove to school,” Rhetta said. “She came straight off the racetrack. She could really fly.”

“Kjare, Duncan,” the teenage photojournalist from Norway began.
Monika’s letter to Duncan Adams, a 17-year-old Anderson County High School senior, included a small language lesson.
She had underlined a few English words in colored pencil to match the text of a second letter, the Norwegian translation.
Duncan requested all of his pen pals to write one letter in English, and then translate the same text into their native tongues.
Another pen pal, a teenage girl from Finland, obliged Duncan’s request. Sort of.

A Lawrenceburg man was charged Dec. 18 for driving under the influence and impersonating a police officer.
Christopher Kyle Kessinger, 34, of 1288 Pigeon Fork Road, was stopped on Interstate 64 by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office after off duty Lawrenceburg Police officer Bryan Brashears reported he was driving recklessly, according to a report released by the sheriff’s office.

The Anderson County Public Library’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously during its Dec. 17 meeting to purchase five iPads for library board business as the board transitions to a new paperless policy.
Trustees, with the exception of absent board member Martha McNaghten, voted to give library Director Pam Mullins the purchasing authority to buy five computer tablets to be used solely for board business by trustees.

“The Avenstoke” begins every feature film screening with a newsreel.
A Thursday night showing at the Lawrenceburg theater — located in the Rasmussen’s daughter’s old bedroom at the top of the stairs in a warm house at the end of a snowy, windy road off Avenstoke Road — featured war footage from mid April 1945.